Anything that fails one of those three deserves a hard look, no matter how ordinary the rest of it seems.
Some of what follows was found while checking the jobs on this list; the rest is well known and worth knowing. If you remember one line, make it this one: a job pays you money, you never pay it.
You are offered a job abroad and told the employer will sponsor you — you just need to cover the visa processing, the work permit, the medical, the police check or the flight, and it will be reimbursed from your first salary.
How to tell: A genuine employer sponsoring a foreign worker pays the sponsorship costs itself; that is what sponsorship means. If a job abroad requires money from you before you travel, treat it as a scam until proven otherwise. Not one employer on this list offers visa sponsorship, and none asks for a penny.
An agency says it can place you with an employer overseas, for a fee. Sometimes it is called registration, documentation, processing or a “service charge”.
How to tell: In most countries it is the employer, not the worker, who pays a licensed recruiter — and charging the worker is often illegal outright. Before paying anyone, check whether the agency is licensed by your country's labour ministry or overseas employment authority, and check that licence with the authority, not with the agency.
Called contract substitution. You sign one agreement at home, then on arrival you are handed a different one: lower pay, longer hours, a different job, or a different employer entirely. Your original contract is treated as though it never existed.
How to tell: Keep your own signed copy, photographed and emailed to yourself and someone you trust before you travel. Ask for the contract in a language you read fluently. If an agency will not give you a copy to keep, that alone is the answer.
On arrival an employer or agent takes your passport “for safekeeping”, for processing, or as security against the cost of your ticket.
How to tell: Your passport is yours and no employer has any right to keep it. This is one of the clearest markers of forced labour. Find out, before you travel, which embassy or consulate covers you and how to contact it.
You are told training is free, but the contract says that if you leave within a year or two you must repay its cost — often more than you will earn in that time. Sometimes flights and accommodation are added to the debt.
How to tell: This is designed so leaving is unaffordable, which is the point. Read what happens if you resign before you sign anything. A fair employer that invests in training does not turn it into a loan you cannot escape.
The job is yours, but first there is a small payment — registration, application, background check, training, a certificate, a uniform, or a “refundable” deposit returned on your first payslip.
How to tell: Real employers pay to hire people. They never charge you. The payslip that was going to refund your deposit never arrives.
You get the job. Then a laptop, headset or software licence is being sent to you — but you must pay a deposit first. Or they send a cheque or transfer to buy the kit from “our supplier” and ask you to send the rest back. Days later the payment reverses and your money is gone.
How to tell: Some real employers here — Influx and Wing Assistant, for example — do expect you to already own a good laptop and internet. That means buying it yourself, from any shop, before you apply. No real employer sells you equipment, ships you equipment you must pay for, or sends you money to go and buy it.
The overpayment or fake cheque trick. They pay you too much “by mistake”, or send funds for expenses, and ask you to return the difference quickly. The original payment fails later and you lose whatever you sent.
How to tell: Never move money for an employer you have not properly been hired by. Wait until a payment has fully cleared — not just appeared — before touching it.
You are paid to evaluate a shop or a money-transfer service. A cheque or transfer arrives to fund the exercise, you send most of it on as instructed, and it reverses.
How to tell: Almost every mystery-shopper advert that involves you moving money is a version of the fake cheque trick. Real mystery shopping is low-paid, arranged through established firms, and never asks you to wire funds.
You are asked to buy gift cards, phone airtime or crypto for a manager, a client or an office event, and told you will be paid back.
How to tell: No employer anywhere runs its purchasing this way. This one is always a scam, with no exceptions.
A “task” job on an app. You complete small jobs and watch a balance build. To withdraw, or to reach the next level, you must first deposit your own money. The first small withdrawal often works, which is what makes you trust it with more.
How to tell: A job pays you. You never pay in. If your own money must go in before earnings come out, it is not a job.
Common in data-entry and typing adverts. The work is real-sounding but you must first buy the software, a licence key, a template pack or access to the client portal.
How to tell: Employers supply the tools they require, or expect you to already own ordinary things like a computer. Nobody legitimate sells you the means to do their work.
Partway through, the recruiter mentions your CV needs professional rewriting, or that you need a paid reference check, a skills certificate or a background report — conveniently available from them or a partner.
How to tell: A recruiter is paid by employers. The moment one starts selling you a service, they have stopped working for you.
The task keeps growing. A short exercise becomes a full design, a finished article, a complete spreadsheet, a marketing plan for their real product, or a week of “trial” shifts. Sometimes there was never a job and they wanted the work. Sometimes the job is real and they are taking free labour from a queue of applicants.
How to tell: A fair test takes an hour or two and uses made-up material, not their live project. If a task will take a full day or more, ask whether it is paid and get the answer in writing before starting. That is a normal question and a good employer will not mind it. If they refuse or get irritated, you have your answer.
Ghost jobs. The advert sits there for months. The company is collecting CVs for later, testing the market, or must advertise for internal reasons while the role is already promised to someone.
How to tell: Check the posting date. Be wary of adverts with no date, no closing date and no named contact that have clearly been up a long time.
You apply for a specific role and end up in a database. Nothing is actually open. Watch for “join our talent network”, “register your interest”, or “we will contact you when a project starts”.
How to tell: Not dishonest, and sometimes worth doing — but know which one you are signing up for. On this list, the Welo Data language hubs are labelled as pools rather than a seat waiting to be filled.
You are commissioned for articles, designs or data work. The first small payment arrives. The next batch is bigger, and after you deliver, nobody replies.
How to tell: Build up slowly with any new client. Get part of the money before you deliver the whole job, and be suspicious when a modest client suddenly wants a large volume of work at once.
Not a trick, just wage theft. You deliver, you invoice, and nothing happens. Across borders there is usually no realistic way to enforce anything, and the amounts are too small for lawyers.
How to tell: Ask for a deposit or stage payments on freelance work. Use a platform that holds the money in escrow for a first job with a stranger. Treat a client who resists any payment protection as one who has done this before.
On Upwork, Fiverr or similar, a client suggests moving to direct payment to “save the fees”.
How to tell: The fee is what buys you protection. Off-platform, there is no escrow, no dispute process and no record, and it usually breaks the platform's rules so you lose your account too. The saving is real; it is just not yours.
Task and AI-training platforms sometimes deactivate accounts, or drop whole countries, with pending earnings unpaid. This is not hypothetical: Remotasks has removed entire country cohorts, Kenya and Nigeria among them, and Appen has cancelled projects abruptly with rates falling sharply.
How to tell: Withdraw often rather than letting a balance build. Never treat this kind of work as your only income, and read what the terms say about deactivation before you start.
During “screening” you are asked for bank account details, a photo of your passport or national ID, or a tax number.
How to tell: These come after a written offer naming the company, the role, the pay and the start date. Anyone asking earlier is careless with your information or collecting it to steal your identity.
A recruiter asks for your current payslip or bank statement to “verify” your salary.
How to tell: Nobody needs this. It is used either to pay you as little as possible or to harvest your financial details. You can state your expected salary without proving your last one.
You are hired quickly and sent official-looking forms: tax forms, direct-deposit forms, ID uploads. They are copies built to collect everything about you at once.
How to tell: Check the sender's email address letter by letter. Scammers use addresses that look almost right — an extra letter, .co instead of .com, or a free email account. Real companies write from their own domain.
A “verification step” where you are asked to read out or forward a code that arrives by text or email.
How to tell: That code is what protects your own account, and someone is using it to log in as you right now. Nobody legitimate ever needs it. Never share one, for any reason.
Under “setting up your workstation” you are asked to install a program that lets them see or control your computer.
How to tell: No real employer needs control of your personal machine before you have started. It gives strangers your files, your email and your banking.
Advertised as payment processor, financial agent, quality-control inspector or logistics assistant. The work is receiving money in your own bank account and passing it on, or receiving parcels and posting them abroad.
How to tell: This is money laundering and handling stolen goods, and the person whose name is on the account is the one arrested. However normal the advert looks, no real company moves money or goods through an employee's personal account or home address.
The company is genuine; the recruiter is not. They use a real employer's logo and a lookalike email address or website, so everything you check seems to confirm the story.
How to tell: Do not follow the link you were sent. Search for the company yourself, open its own careers page, and see whether the job is there. If it is not on their own site, it is not their job.
MLM companies almost never use the term. The advert says sales representative, brand ambassador, business associate, financial consultant or distributor, and talks about being your own boss, unlimited earnings and building your team.
How to tell: Look at where the money comes from. In an MLM you earn mainly by recruiting others rather than selling to customers, and you must buy a starter kit, stock or a membership first. The income examples belong to the few at the top; most people lose money. A real sales job pays a base plus commission on what you sell, never asks you to buy stock, and never pays you for signing up friends and family.
A large monthly figure turns out to be a ceiling you reach only at maximum output, or there is no base pay at all.
How to tell: Read exactly how the money is earned before committing. Both turned up on boards checked for this list. Neither is illegal, but neither is what most people mean by a salary.
The title sounds like finance. The actual task is persuading people to deposit money on a platform, usually starting with your own family and friends.
How to tell: If your job is bringing in other people's deposits, you are the sales arm of something that will probably take their money — and your name and relationships are what is being spent.
Advertised as chat support or community moderation, paid per message. The real work is posing as someone else to keep lonely people paying for conversation.
How to tell: If you are paid per message rather than per problem solved, and told to use a false name and photo, you are the labour behind a romance scam — whatever the job title says.
Pay for our course and we will place you in a job. The course happens. The placement does not.
How to tell: Genuine training is sold as training, not as a job. If the promise of employment is what makes the fee worth paying, ask for names of people they placed and check independently.
Data entry at three times the market rate. A junior admin role paying a senior salary. No interview needed.
How to tell: This is the strongest single warning sign there is. Scammers use a high number because it stops people asking questions. Look up what the role normally pays where the employer is based, and be suspicious of anything far above it.
A message on WhatsApp, Telegram or email says they found your CV and have a position for you, sometimes with an offer attached before any interview.
How to tell: Real hiring does not work this way. Recruiters do approach people, but they ask about your experience and arrange a conversation — they do not lead with a job offer for a role you never applied for.
You are sent a shortened link, a plain Google Form, or a form-builder page unconnected to the company's real web address.
How to tell: Real jobs sit on the employer's careers page, or a recruitment system like Greenhouse, Lever, Workable or Ashby, and the address reflects that. One listing checked for this research sent applicants through a shortened link with no company name behind it at all.
A recruiter will only speak on a messaging app. There is no real interview. You are offered the job almost immediately, then a payment or task appears.
How to tell: Speed is the trick — it is meant to feel lucky so you stop asking questions. Real employers interview you, usually by video, and write from a company email address. One Indonesian job board prints a warning about exactly this on its own listings.
The interview is text only, or the camera “is broken”, or the person on screen moves oddly, does not respond naturally, and repeats phrasing.
How to tell: Insist on a live video call before sharing documents or accepting anything. Text-only hiring exists, but combined with any other sign here it is a serious problem.
No website, no careers page, no verifiable address — one entry on a job board.
How to tell: Eleven roles were removed from this list for this reason. It does not always mean fraud, but nobody can confirm the company exists, so do not send it documents or money.
Titles like “online jobs that pay by mobile money, no experience needed”. They exist to collect applicants and pass them to schemes that charge fees.
How to tell: If a page's main promise is how easy it is, rather than naming a real employer and describing real work, it is advertising, not a job.
Do not use the link you were sent. Search for the company yourself, open its own website, and find its careers page. If the job is not there, it is not their job.
Then ask three things. Who exactly is employing me, and what is their address? What is the pay, in writing? Why do they need this from me now? A real employer answers all three without hesitating. A scam gets vague, or rushes you.
You lose nothing by waiting a day to check. No genuine job disappears because you were careful — and anyone who tells you it will has just told you what they are.